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The Romantic Motion
By Terry Ramsaye
Clara Kimball Young and John Bunny in the old Vitagraph days, in a bit of by-play not for screen registration
Chapter XXV
IT was the year of 1912. To place it back in the perspective of time, remember that this was the year of the Titanic disaster, the discovery of the South Pole, the election of Woodrow Wilson, and the Rosenthal murder in New York. Motorists still wore linen dusters. Birth control was yet to be heard from. Skirts were ankle length, and there was a new war in the Balkans.
If you can not place it by that, recall it as the year of the tango eruption, the year of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and "Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon."
Wallie Reid, when he first appeared in pictures in 1911,
played in Yitagraph's " Leather Stocking Tides"
And it seems even longer ago than those saffron-tinted memories in the swiftly moving world of the motion picture. Twelve years ago in the films is about the close of the Middle Ages.
One afternoon, in March of this 1912, an obscure little
man of no special importance presented himself at the
office of the Motion Picture Patents Company in New
York. He gave his name to the attendant in the lobby.
The name was "Adolph Zukor."
Zukor took a seat.
The attendant took his name inside and returned to his post. There were many waiting at the portals, exchangemen, theater men, cranks, reformers and all that miscellany of callers who sought the attention or favor of the motion picture's overlords, the bosses of the film trust.
An hour passed and many who came later went in and came out again while Zukor sat waiting. After a time he attracted some attention because of his persistence and apparent patience. The door opened just a little and some one peered out to size up this little fellow. There was a low voiced conversation on the other side of the door.
"Who is this guy Zukor, anyway?"
" Oh. he's an exhibitor, string of theaters with Marcus Loew — got some nut idea about big pictures."
"Well we don't want him — we've got Lubin — that's enough for us."
Meanwhile, Zukor kept on waiting. A certain degree of patience in places where he has to be patient is one of his characteristics. Sometimes patience makes speed.
But it was, after all, an absurd hope that had brought Zukor to the doors of the stronghold of the motion picture combine. He had an idea and a motion picture. He intended to ask the picture
Now You Can Read About the Time —
Adolph Zukor sat on a waiting room bench three hours for a chance to tell the Motion Picture Patents Company about his idea of famous players in famous plays — and they did not want to hear it.
Clara Kimball Young emerged from a Salt Lake stock company to appear in Vitagraph pictures in a minor part ill a one reel picture that started her up the road to fame.
"Quo Yadis," produced in Italy, was imported by George Kleine and presented for a sensational success which upset the world of the speaking stage and the motion picture. D. W. Griffith asked for a raise and promoted himself out of Biograph into the independent field, as his first step from an anonymous obscurity to tame as; the world's greatest director.
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